The Doctor didn’t speak up in agreement, but his relaxed demeanor and the uncharacteristically soft and open expression on his face as he tweaked the TARDIS controls made it clear that he had also enjoyed the day.

“I suppose it’s time for you apes to get some sleep,” he said instead, the remark lacking its usual disparaging edge.

Rose yawned involuntarily in reply, then said, “That’s not a bad idea.”

“But you owe me something first, Doc,” Jack said, a devilish grin on his face and in his voice. He didn’t seem to be tired at all, instead he closed in on the console with a spring in his step.

The Doctor merely quirked an eyebrow in reply, not having the faintest idea what Jack was talking about.

Jack nodded, having stepped up directly in front of the Doctor. Face to face, inches from each other, the Doctor refused to back away or show anything more than a mild interest in Jack’s behavior.

Rose looked on from the other side of the console, having no more idea than the Doctor what was going on.

“At lunch, I got up to get us all another round of drinks,” Jack said. The apparent non sequitur gave Rose no hints, but the Doctor’s eyes widened noticeably as Jack continued, “We had to pay for lunch with sound samples, just like everything else in the museum. I sang a classic fortieth century love ballad to get those drinks.”

“And your point is?” the Doctor replied mildly, though it was obvious he’d realized what Jack was trying to say.

Rose still didn’t understand, but she moved a bit closer out of curiosity, sensing that something interesting was about to happen.

“I bought you a drink, Doctor!” Jack crowed triumphantly. “You said that’s what I had to do to earn a kiss. So it’s your turn to pay up!”

There was a pause, a breathless moment, and then just as Rose blinked it was as if the day had rewound to that morning’s high spirited chasing around the console.

The Doctor slipped past Jack like a shot, and they were off again as if the intervening hours had never passed.

The difference was that after their experiences during the day, sitting clearly in the back of each of their minds was a memory of Jack’s rather erotic mental perception of their musical collaboration. It was no longer an unspoken possibility in the half formed thoughts of Rose’s subconscious, or a dream of honest and carefree closeness which the Doctor didn’t dare allow himself. Now it was an openly shared idea between the three of them.

Even more importantly, the music they had played and heard and created together during the day had given them a new avenue of communication, and a deeper understanding of each other’s emotions. It had allowed them to see each other on an even footing for the first time, opening their eyes to see beyond their misconceptions.

During their telepathic collaboration in the Telekinetic Waveform Extrapolator, it had been possible for Rose and the Doctor to plainly see the honesty and depth of affection shining beneath Jack’s almost involuntary flirting. It had been possible for the Doctor and Jack to truly see Rose as an adult capable to holding her own in their relationship and worthy of their respect as a woman, instead of the occasionally smothering protection they had both afforded her as if she were only a child under their care. And Jack and Rose had finally been able to see a bit of the man behind the mysterious persona of the Doctor, as they’d watched him confront a small piece of his painful past and helped him find some of the beauty hidden within it.

They had each grown, and grown together, through their shared music.

Her previous yawning forgotten, Rose found herself laughing at her friends’ antics once more and wondering if Jack’s metaphor might actually work its way into reality if he ever managed to catch the Doctor and claim his kiss.

Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she then jumped into the chase with a gleeful shout and began to help Jack in his quest.

It didn’t take the two of them long to catch their quarry, though it might be that their quarry didn’t so terribly mind being caught.

finis.

Food of Love: Musical ‘Notes’

About the Music in Food of Love

The music in this fic, with one and a half exceptions, was all composed or created by me. I use Mozart music editing software for my MIDI editing and Sound Forge for conversion to MP3 format. I uploaded the files to FileAve, and then went crazy beating on LJ in order to get the hosting and embedding to work. If anyone ever needs to do something similar, I can probably save you some trouble with a few tips!

Below is a track list, with a few details about each of the tunes. If you enjoyed them, feel free to download copies (links can be found in the track list) for yourself. I only ask that you not redistribute the music or use it for anything else without crediting me! :-)

Track List for Food of Love

1. Jack’s Piano - This is the ‘half’ of the one and half non-original tracks. The left hand of this little piano ditty is a MIDI sample from a Casio piano I used to own. The right hand part is completely original.

2. Rose and Jack’s Song - This is an original tune I wrote a few years ago. I never named it, and never had any idea what to do with it. When I was looking through my stuff for something to be Rose and Jack’s collaboration, it just jumped out at me.

3. The Doctor’s Harp - Exactly as described in the story, the Doctor plucks experimentally at the harp as if deciding if he really wants to play it or not.

4. The Doctor’s Song - My interpretation of a Gallifreyan lullaby, and one of the two songs composed originally with this fic in mind. I can imagine exactly what my composition professor would have to say about this piece, but I maintain that it is supposed to sound a little bit wandering and alien. The scale it uses is meant to be a vaguely Pythagorean (ancient Greek) pentatonic scale, in agreement with my theory that Gallifrey (or at least a Gallifreyan or two) had great influence on ancient Greek culture.

5. Rose’s Recorder - The second song composed originally with this fic in mind, this is meant to be a simple recorder tune that Rose might have learned in a beginner or intermediate level method book. It is in a basic AABA format, and makes use of my favorite musical interval, the major sixth (familiar to many from the old NBC jingle).

6. Celestial Winds “Come With Me” - A track from the Celestial Winds CD Bliss, which should be available on Amazon. Not only did I think the title was perfect, the track actually had harp and recorder and percussion all intermingled. Obviously the quality is significantly above that of my little MIDI tunes, but I think I explained that away sufficiently in the fic.

Oh Wow!! The music in this had an almost erotic feel to it. You've taken this story to a new level and incorporated something that touches the souls of your readers...music. :) It was lovely and absolutely amazing. I honestly don't have the words to describe how this story made me feel. Thank you so much! *applaudes*

I think this is the most original, unusual idea for a fic I have ever come across! The embedded music files really made this special - although the fic itself is great and I love the way the relationship between the three of them deepens as they come to understand each other better, listening to the music they make as I read makes it so much more of an experience.

Absolutely beautiful. Am listening again to Come With Me as I type this, and I have Rose and Jack's Song and The Doctor's Song on my playlist as well. Thank you so much for taking part in the ficathon!

Thank you so much for running the ficathon! I never would've written a story like this without the incentive, and after all the frustration of getting the embedding to work, seeing the results have made it so worth it!

Thank you for the prompt, and for having music listed in your LJ Interests. I never would have written this kind of fic without that incentive! And as I said in reply to wendymr's comment above, I really feel like this story has been worth the extra effort.

I so glad you liked the end result, both story and music. It was wonderful to read your comments! :-)

Definitely. I'm glad I could provide the prompt. Sometimes they can work to lead you in unexpected directions! (I once wrote an entire extraneous character whom I came to like quite a bit, just because I had to work a flashlight into a story.)

This is so wonderfully unique! I also read your post-it note story, which is what sent me searching for more of your stuff, because that was brilliantly unique as well. You have a wonderfully creative mind for multimedia.

There are really two steps. The first is hosting. You need to find a place to upload your mp3 so that it will be available for download by others. I suggest FileAve.com because I know it works with LJ.

The second step is embedding. In the HTML mode for a new LJ entry, use the lj-embed tag and the embedding code that FileAve.com supplies you. You may need to change the height and width options to play around with the side of the embedded controls, and set the auto play and loop options. The HTML involved is pretty simple, you just need to look for the right English words in the code.

If you need more specific help, just let me know a bit more about your situation and I'll see what I can do. :-)

Fileave must have deleted them on me when I wasn't looking... thank you for letting me know! They should be fixed now. At worst you'll need to refresh once to get them to start working again, though some people did also report that they always needed to click twice on the player controls to get them to work. You can head back to the Forward and give it a try. Let me know how it goes, and thanks again for letting me know there was a problem. Hope you enjoy the music! :-D

greetings

This is adaliazandra's fic journal, which she hadn't planned to use very often. That plan has since been defenestrated in favor of posting fic update notices and rambles about DW and TW.

If you note the spiffy paid-account layout, that's because nightrider101 is simply the most wonderful person ever! :-)

If I seem to have disappeared off the face of the Internet, it's because I probably did. I don't actually *like* suddenly ignoring my LJ friends and leaving my stories hanging, though, so odds are I'll be back eventually.